/monkey-cache

Monkeys in Barrels, the best way to cache data!

Primary LanguageC#MIT LicenseMIT

monkey-cache

Easily cache any data structure for a specific amount of time in any .NET application.

Build Status:

NuGets

Name Info
MonkeyCache NuGet
MonkeyCache - Dev MyGet
MonkeyCache.LiteDB NuGet
MonkeyCache.LiteDB - Dev MyGet

Platform Support

MonkeyCache is a .NET Standard 2.0 library, but has some platform specific tweaks for storing data in the correct Cache directory.

Platform Version
Xamarin.iOS iOS 7+
Xamarin.Mac All
Xamarin.Android API 14+
Windows 10 UWP 10.0.16299+
.NET Core 2.0+
ASP.NET Core 2.0+
.NET 4.6.1+

What is Monkey Cache?

The goal of MonkeyCache is to enable developers to easily cache any data for a limited amount of time. It is not MonkeyCache's mission to handle network requests to get or post data, only to cache data easily.

All data for MonkeyCache is stored and retrieved in a Barrel.

For instance you are making a web request and you get some json back from the server. You would want the ability to cache this data incase you go offline, but also you need it to expire after 24 hours.

That may look something like this:

async Task<IEnumerable<Monkey>> GetMonkeysAsync()
{
    var url = "http://montemagno.com/monkeys.json";

    //Dev handle online/offline scenario
    if(!CrossConnectivity.Current.IsConnected)
        return Barrel.Current.Get<IEnumerable<Monkey>>(key: url);

    //Dev handles checking if cache is expired
    if(!Barrel.Current.IsExpired(key: url))
    {
        return Barrel.Current.Get<IEnumerable<Monkey>>(key: url);
    }


    var client = new HttpClient();
    var json = await client.GetStringAsync(url);
    var monkeys = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<IEnumerable<Monkey>>(json);

    //Saves the cache and pass it a timespan for expiration
    Barrel.Current.Add(key: url, data: monkeys, expiration: TimeSpan.FromDays(1));

}

MonkeyCache will never delete data unless you want to, which is pretty nice incase you are offline for a long period of time. However, there are additional helpers to clean up data:

    //removes all data
    Barrel.Current.EmptyAll();

    //param list of keys to flush
    Barrel.Current.Empty(key: url);

The above shows how you can integrate MonkeyCache into your existing source code without any modifications to your network code. However, MonkeyCache can help you there too! MonkeyCache also offers helpers when dealing with network calls via HttpCache.

HttpCache balances on top of the Barrel and offers helper methods to pass in a simple url that will handle adding and updating data into the Barrel.

Task<IEnumerable<Monkey>> GetMonkeysAsync()
{
    var url = "http://montemagno.com/monkeys.json";

    //Dev handle online/offline scenario
    if(!CrossConnectivity.Current.IsConnected)
        return Barrel.Current.Get<IEnumerable<Monkey>>(key: url);

    return HttpCache.GetAsync<IEnumerable<Monkey>>(key: url, expiration: TimeSpan.FromDays(1), headers: headers);

}

Another goal of MonkeyCache is to offer a fast and native experience when storing and retrieving data from the Barrel. MonkeyCache uses a SQLite database to store all data across all platforms. This is super fast and is supported natively on each platform. In addition to the SQLite implementation, there is an implementation based on LiteDB for data storage. Each have their own NuGet package, but have the same API, namespaces, and class names. This means that they cannot be installed at the same time, but one or the other.

Regardless of implementation, Cache will always be stored in the default platform specific location:

Platform Location
Xamarin.iOS NSSearchPath.GetDirectories(NSSearchPathDirectory.CachesDirectory, NSSearchPathDomain.User)[0];
Xamarin.Mac NSSearchPath.GetDirectories(NSSearchPathDirectory.CachesDirectory, NSSearchPathDomain.User)[0];
Xamarin.Android Application.Context.CacheDir.AbsolutePath
Windows 10 UWP Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.Path
.NET Core Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)
ASP.NET Core Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)
.NET Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)

Setup

It is required that you set an ApplicationId for your application so a folder is created specifically for your app on disk. This can be done with a static string on Barrel before calling ANY method:

Barrel.ApplicationId = "your_unique_name_here";